Earl Deveaux’s friend Louis Bacon in Trouble?
A leopard cannot change its spots and it seems that a pair of career con artists aren’t changing their ways. Alleged fraudster Allan may is facing more legal problems in the Caribbean as an arrest warrant for his arrest was issued by the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (ECSC) in St. Lucia for contempt of court for failing to comply with a court order.
Allan May is the man linked to associates of Lyford Cay billionaire Louis Bacon in an alleged smear campaign against Canadian garment manufacturer Peter Nygard. The contempt charge is a result of his failure to comply with a court order providing for payment of the judgment against him and his wife Michelle May in the amount of US$189,000, being the amount they fraudulently obtained from investors, and production of documents relating to the disposition of the monies fraudulently received from investors.
The smear campaign which Bacon and the Mays allegedly launched against Peter Nygard took on the form of a media expose on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The CBC led a negative expose on the fashion mogul, portraying him as a tyrant. Nygard believed that there was more at work here than just a news report. He pursued the issue in the courts to defend his good name, and has won the first three rounds against the CBC.
The case is eerily familiar to that of a Canadian Doctor Leenan, who was awarded more than a million dollars in a case which left the judges delivering harsh words of criticism against the CBC for crossing over professional and ethical journalistic lines.
In Nygard’s case against the CBC, Bacon and the Mays are pinpointed as part authors of the smear campaign and to date, the judges are following Nygard’s reasoning. While that case continues, Michelle May is subject to an outstanding contempt warrant issued February 14th 2011 issued by the same Court in a landmark ruling, for the same reasons. The warrant was reaffirmed by the Court as outstanding on October 10th 2011.
Attorneys close to the case say that outstanding warrants do not benefit from extradition treaties between the Eastern Caribbean Federation and the USVI.
Prosecutors say they are in the process of perfecting this warrant, with hope of having completed early next month. When perfected, the warrant will be effective within the entire Eastern Caribbean Federation and carries a two week sentence.
Mr. May was arrested Saturday April 30,last year, nearly three months after a warrant was issued for his arrest by the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (ECSC) on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.
The Winnipeg Sun newspaper reported that police on St. Lucia said the Mays, were found in contempt of court after failing to repay $189,000 to five investors following a civil fraud conviction in April 2009.
“According to police in St. Lucia, the couple has ‘a history of committing frauds in other Caribbean islands, leaving each jurisdiction for the next island when identified by law enforcement officials’,” the Sun reported recently.
There is reason to suspect a correlation between the con artist techniques of the Mays and their suspected cohort, a billionaire hedge fund manager.
An affidavit filed in the Bahamian Supreme Court in 2011, connected the documentary to some of Bacon’s Bahamian associates, as it recounted the sworn testimony of Alick Morrison, a former Scotland Yard detective turned security consultant/private investigator, after the CBC story made news around the world.
“Bacon apparently enlisted the support of the Lyford Cay Property Owners Association (LCPOA) and its general manager, Mary Braithwaite to attack Nygard,” the affidavit said.
“He has additionally engaged a prominent Bahamian lawyer, Pericles Maillis (Bacon’s Bahamian lawyer) – who also represents LCPOA – to attack Nygard on various grounds. An investigation has revealed that CBC used corrupt and discredited sources for the purpose of an expose story. Those sources had the further aim of forcing Nygard out of The Bahamas,” said the court document.
